War Is A Purification Rite
by miraclemodus
Summary: Ha! Haha, hahahaha. Life is funny. Everything is funny. Your life is a heaping pile of shit and you want to punch everyone in the mouth. You want to laugh. You want to cry. You want a lot of things. But mostly you want Sakata Gintoki.


Ha! Haha, hahahaha. Life is funny. Everything is funny. Your life is a heaping pile of shit and you want to punch everyone in the mouth. You want to laugh. You want to cry. You want a lot of things.

But mostly you want Sakata Gintoki. You want him so badly. Look at the way he moves. He's so . . . hhhnnnnn. When he reaches across the table his shoulder flexes and you want to bite it. He grabs an egg. It's the most erotic thing you've ever seen, this cute little killer cracking an egg over his rice. His nose is wrinkled in concentration. You want to rub raw egg into his hair, you want him to have viscous egg white trickling over his face while you - you want him to - you want -

Ahahahaha, you want to have an egg, please, so you can put it on your rice! So you can eat your breakfast. Look at the Shiroyasha, half-asleep and eating burned rice scraped from the bottom of the pot. Serves him right for showing up late to breakfast! Serves him right for drinking so much! Serves him right for flinging his arms around you and sliding down so he's sprawled across your lap and looking at you with such sleepy eyes. How dare he start this fire inside your belly. You curse him to eat burned rice forever and ever.

"You're ahead this week, Tatsuma."

"Ahaha, what?"

"Numbers. You're ahead. Good for you." Nasty Shinsuke winks.

Some of the men have started a morbid leaderboard for kills. Gintoki was first on Monday, Shinsuke pulled ahead on Tuesday and Wednesday, pretty little Zura got the best of Thursday, and since then it's been you and the White Demon, neck and neck. Gintoki pretends to hate it but if he hated it so much he'd get rid of it. You _actually_ hate it, you fucking loathe it, but you don't have the credentials or the _history _ or the _tragic past_ that will get them to stop. You're not from _circumstances_ so you don't get to dictate policy. You sometimes wonder if your friends are actually your friends. If they were, you could confide that you have your own _circumstances_, that you have your own past, that perhaps not every child born into money is born in joy. Perhaps a child born into money is born to disappoint and then sent to die in a futile war.

Who cares, it looks like your new eternal rival has dribbled some soy sauce on his wrist. Whatever will he do now? Oh. Oh my. He's licking it off. He's licking the thin skin of his inner wrist and you are _writhing_ inside. You feel like your insides are made of snakes, and the snakes are all fucking.

"Quit it, Gintoki, you're giving all the creeps jerkoff material." Shinsuke's voice is just utterly intolerable this morning. It is unacceptable. How dare he make such horrible noise? And now he's smirking at you like he _knows_ something. What a disgusting little man. He's your friend (maybe) but sometimes you hate him so much. You've seen how he looks at Katsura when he thinks nobody's watching, but you're observant. You know a lot of things. What does Shinsuke know?

Not as much as you do, you're certain.

He winks again. Maybe he knows more than you think. You hope his eye pops out of his skull.

.

Gintoki is draped all over you again and his hands are tangled in your hair. "Soft," he mutters. "Not as nice 's mine, though." He gently tugs, then pulls harder. "Tough guy. Ooh, so big and scary. Zura, be careful of the scary loud man."

"It's not scary, it's Zura" your fearless leader slurs. "I mean Katsura. Draw four and change it to yellow."

"Ahaha, why would you do this to me? I hope your dick rots and falls off." You don't have any yellows, and you have to draw and draw and draw until you finally luck out. "Skip! Sorry, Kintoki!"

He makes a loud whining noise. "Tatsuma, nooo." He is whimpering your name right in your ear. Holy hell.

"Ahah, ha, ahhh. Hah." You all have so many cards left, this game is going to drag out forever. How wonderful! If only Shinsuke and Zura would leave, possibly for eternity! Go away, everybody, you only want to play with the Shiroyasha.

"Tatsuma, you're letting him see your cards." Shinsuke is looking at you with a strange expression. "You shouldn't let him see. You'll lose that way." For a fleeting second, it seems like his expression is sympathetic, and maybe it is. Maybe it's the face of a man who understands.

But then Gintoki yanks your hair again and you break eye contact, and it's like that moment never happened.

.

It's not like you're special. You're not getting singled out. Drunk, Gintoki is playful and loopy as a cat on catnip. He'll drape Katsura's hair over his own head and wear it like a wig. He'll stick his tongue in Shinsuke's ear just to be obnoxious. It's just that they're used to this, they grew up with it, and you didn't. You didn't grow up with much of anything. Being the eldest son just meant being the oldest failure. You don't have any brothers left - all of them dead or (and) disowned, and you're sure as shit never going home again, so you hope your sister can live up to your parents' impossible standards. Good luck to her, she'll be turning four soon. Poor kid. Better her than you, though! Your family is nicer to girls.

So basically you're not used to affection. You're not used to someone demanding, _requiring_ your attention. Gintoki's not like this in public. The Shiroyashi is standoffish and icy and unreachable, an inspiration to the soldiers. You all hold back, to some extent.

You four are the Generation of Miracles: The White Demon, the Noble Youth of Madness, the Leader of the Kiheitai, and . . . you. Somehow you're one of the leaders. You've always been too tall, too shallow, too loud, too _everything_ to be of any use, but for some reason an entire army seems to disagree. You've got followers. You've got admirers. You've got a _reputation_, for god's sake, and it precedes you like Gintoki's does. You've got beautiful people making eyes at you in every village. You take advantage of it. Any port in a storm, right? Ahaha, haha, you disgust yourself. None of them have the right face and their hair is always too dark.

Gintoki always teases you about it, and you always laugh, and Katsura always purses his lips in disapproval, and Shinsuke always gives you that sad, knowing look. And in between villages, during nights alone in your tent, you close your eyes and think of the _right_ face, the _right_ hair.

Sometimes afterward you sit up and stare at your hand.

You're so fucked up.

Hah.

.

It's been a long time coming, but you're still surprised when Shinsuke shoves you against a wall. You're both filthy and tired and spattered with the weird-colored blood of countless Amanto. (Twenty-two to fourteen, which means you've pulled ahead of him in the rankings.) You don't know what to do, so you start laughing, but he claps a grimy hand over your mouth.

"Listen," he says, and his voice is low and sad. "I need you to be quiet and _listen_."

All you can do is nod.

"I know how hard it is but you can't."

You want to ask "can't what?" but you know exactly what he's talking about. You don't want to hear it but he's still got his hand over your mouth and you know he'll probably hit you if you fight. Who wants to get punched in the face? Not you!

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but you can't. We need to stay unified. We can't lead if we're not a unit. We need to stay together and the only way we can guarantee it is if I - if you - if_ we_ stay strong. And I know, believe me, I know how hard it is." He takes his hand off your mouth and you can finally breathe - your poor broken nose is stuffed with clotted blood and you were starting to get black sparks around your vision.

"Haha, Rinsuke, what - " but you shut up when he reaches up and grabs you by the shoulders.

"I'm not asking."

The shittiest thing in the world is that you know he's right. He lets go and your shoulders sag. Life is so funny, sometimes, because look how high he had to reach to grab you! Ridiculous! Haha, ha, you have to laugh because you want to cry and you're not going to do that, not now, not ever. He's right and that's the worst. How dare he be so right. How dare Gintoki be so - so _him_. How dare your life be so stupidly cruel. How dare Shinsuke know exactly how you feel and how dare he make that sympathetic face because if you can't be happy you at least want your pain to be unique and special.

"How?"

His face is unbearably understanding. "We'll help each other. We'll change up the seating arrangements. We'll stick together. We'll look out for each other." With unendurable tenderness he smoothes your shirt and adjusts your collar. "I'll take care of you and you'll take care of me. We'll get through this." You understand that this is half demand and half request, but what can you do? You nod. Your heart breaks.

The next time you play Uno you sit between Katsura and Shinsuke and you play to win. Fuck everything.

.

There are a good number of people willing to distract you, and they do a decent job. When that doesn't work, Shinsuke walks with you and talks about almost anything.

.

It's been months and either you're immune to Gintoki's sleepy smiles or he's smiling less and less. You're hoping it's the former but you're pretty certain it's the latter, and that grieves you. You can bear his touch again. You don't crave it like you used to, but it's nice enough and you don't worry too much about what Shinsuke thinks. He's stopped looking at Katsura. He's stopped looking at everything but the battlefield and the blood on his hands. His one eye is scanning the horizon for something nobody else wants to see. Things are falling apart and you're trying your best to hold it together, laughing too loud and swinging your sword and buying soldiers because most everyone who believes in your cause is dead or dying.

.

It's been more months, and you're feeling all right, and then you meet Shintaro and everything goes to hell again. Ha! All your friends are dying and you're blushing like a schoolgirl! You're giddy when this man stands next to you, you're biting your fingernails when he's around, you're melting as he reaches up and pulls your head down and kisses you, you're lost, lost, lost -

In a week he's dead, half his face blown off, the other half seared almost beyond recognition.

And that's it.

You're done.

.

Before you leave you ask Gintoki to join you. It's the closest you've ever come to a confession. Haha, have you honestly been holding a torch for him? Pathetic.

He says no, of course.

.

The next time you see him you pretend not to recognize him. It's been too long. He's changed. There's a giant dog biting your head and you're getting woozy from blood loss.

Your heart is pounding.

You feel sick, so you puke, and then laugh, and then crash a luxury spaceship into a strange planet. Ha! Haha, hahahaha. Life is funny.

Life is so fucking funny.


End file.
